Tag Archives: Data2X

ASIYA’S day starts at 5.30am. She says her prayers, cooks breakfast for her family, and a curry for dinner, wakes up her three children, feeds them, sends them to school, and then cleans her one-room rented accommodation in a shanty town of Karachi. She leaves home at 9am to work as a domestic helper, and gets back by 6pm. Then onwards, household chores keep her occupied.

Her husband doesn’t have a job since they moved from south Punjab to Karachi. Yet, she is the one doing double duty, managing her home and wearing a second hat as the family’s sole breadwinner.

“Time for myself? Never thought about it,” she says. Her monthly salary is Rs20,000 ($150).

Across a few roads where more affluent Karachiites reside lives Saima (name changed) who earns six times as much as Asiya, her monthly salary as an assistant manager at a multinational firm touching Rs120,000 ($900), more than what her husband earns. Yet Saima’s routine is pretty similar to Asiya’s. In addition she is a caretaker to her elderly mother-in-law once she is back from work.

UNDP’s human development report highlights that care work, mostly undertaken by women, is what enables a majority of the paid work which drives economies. Yet, as it is unpaid, it is under-documented and taken for granted. According to a recent report by the International Labour Organisa­tion (ILO), globally women perform 76.2 per cent of total hours of unpaid care work, more than three times as much as men.

In Asia and the Pacific, this rises to 80pc, where women spend 4.1 times more time in unpaid care work than men. Around the world, women spend two to 10 times more time on unpaid care work than men. Countries have valued unpaid care work between 15 and 39pc of national GDP.

At the recent United Nations World Data Forum 2018 hosted by the UAE government, Gender Data remained at the forefront of discussion as more than 2000 academics, statisticians, and activists from both the public and private sectors globally sat down to discuss the impact of data, especially Gender Data. Data2X, led by the United Nations Foundation, is a key organisation among Gender Data initiatives, and defines Gender Data as “data that is disaggregated by sex (e.g. school enrollment by sex), as well as data that pertains specifically to women and girls (e.g. maternal mortality rates). This data is critical to determining the size and nature of social and economic problems, the causes and consequences of those problems, how to design policies to combat them, and the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of those policies”.

While the Pakistan government strives to get over its economic crises and the subsequent cost on human development, half of the country’s population — women — and data related to their needs and their economic contribution remains mostly missing.

Women’s rights proponents like Ume Laila Azhar, Executive Director of Home Net Pakistan, highlight these issues at the policy level.

“If women are counted in statistics, their work must be counted too,” she says. Ms Azhar adds that in the Human Development Index, if women are not recorded in the labour participation figures, it shows low female participation. “If the numbers of women in the work force appear to be too small, women are not considered at the policy level — policies that translate into job opportunities or initiatives for skill development for women,” she says.

Time Use Surveys (TUS), an important tool in this regard, measure how, on an average, people spend their 24 hours in what activities. “TUS are the best instrument to measure unpaid care work, since they measure the time people spent on this work,” says Mayra Buvinic, senior fellow at Data2X and an internationally recognised expert on gender and development. Linking the dots of TUS to the evaluation of unpaid work, Ms Buvinic says that by assigning a value to unpaid care work, “you make this work visible to policymakers who design policies to increase labour force participation rates and provide social services, including paid care services”. “Unpaid care needs to be factored in the design of these policies since it conflicts with labour force participation and it provides an estimate of the need for child and elder care,” she adds.

The 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) target to improve women’s lives by encouraging their economic participation and financial inclusion. Gender Data is an important tool in the achievement of the SDGs.

A recent tweet by philanthropist Shaniera Akram resonated with the twitterati where she mentioned how women’s multi-tasking and contribution is undervalued. Speaking with Dawn, Ms Akram says that women are often overworked and under-appreciated, not just in Pakistan but all over the world.

“Women can’t be taken for granted anymore. Men can’t just take all the credit, especially when the women — mother, daughter or wife — are taking care of everything behind the scenes,” she says, suggesting that society will benefit from incentivising staying home and taking care of children, the elderly and sick or disabled relatives, with a domestic allowance for women.

“We must focus on getting to a point where women don’t just have the right but also the choice between wanting to stay at home and going into the formal work force,” she adds.

“When families in rural Sindh or Punjab work on lands of landlords with tenancy arrangements, the whole household is working — including the women and children — whose contribution isn’t counted,” points out Ms Azhar. Rural women do a lot of unpaid work like growing vegetables for food sustenance, looking after cattle and milking cows, doing not double but triple duties.

“A woman overworking is a form of exploitation, and she doesn’t get the respect and acknowledgement she deserves for her contribution,” she says.

I remember being asked this question many times by people I was meeting for the first time. I also remember asking other women the same insensitive question, simply because I too, like so many of us, had been conditioned to only value work that gets remuneration in return.

Looking back, the years during which I took a hiatus from work as a journalist, because I was looking after a home and my family, were the years I perhaps worked the hardest. Even physically.

Imagine for a moment that the women all around us – the mothers, the wives, the daughters and daughters-in-law, the sisters and the sisters-in-law – demanded they be paid for the care and services they provide to their families. Imagine what their bank statement would look like at the end of the year!

Let’s look at the numbers. Around the world, women spend two to 10 times more time on unpaid care work and domestic work than men – work that is not often counted in labour statistics. Countries have valued unpaid care work between 15% and 39% of national GDP. Data shows that women often have a higher total work burden than men when paid and unpaid work is combined.

On March 7, 2018, Data2X launched a new report –“Invisible No More? A Methodology and Policy Review of How Time Use Surveys Measure Unpaid Work” – with 18 case studies of countries that have started harnessing time use (TU) surveys to measure unpaid work and generate policy change regarding many issues relevant to social development. This is, in turn, making the world look at the tangible value of unpaid care and household work.

The report defines unpaid care and household work as work done by people to take care of their households and others – everyday unsung chores like cooking, cleaning, caring for children, the ill, and the elderly, and many other important tasks.

So many women among us are super women, literally. They do the jobs of cooks, cleaners, drivers, nurses, tuition teachers, psychological counsellors. They manage homes, finances and relationships. Any study of geriatrics shows that it is mostly, if not always, daughters who can be seen serving old parents and even parents-in-law.

TU surveys are important tools to understand where we, as members of the society, spend our most valuable asset – time. TU surveys, as the aforementioned report states, are quantitative summaries of how people spend their time over a specific period and how much time is spent doing each activity. These surveys help collect data that can be used to improve economic and social policies and have been used to advocate for policies that reduce the care burden, including expanding care for preschool children, elderly people, and people with disabilities. They inform and promote child protection policies by highlighting child labour and promoting broader child welfare systems. They help countries better value the contribution of unpaid care work to an economy, relative to GDP. Once we know who is spending time doing what in a society, countries can drive public campaigns to promote shared responsibilities in the home.

Today, we are celebrating International Women’s Day. And these issues can no longer be avoided. In rural areas, the load of carrying water still disproportionately falls on the women of the world because men, traditionally, do work that gets financial support for the family. But imagine if the women in rural Pakistan started charging for carrying the water back home. After all, this disparity does not only cost women time but also energy, and caloric requirements of water-fetchers increase – a requirement which is often not met for women. This is why now emphasis is being placed on highlighting the importance of men sharing the load of household chores with their women.

But what happens practically? The lion’s share of the food is given to the man because, hey, he is the one who earns. Managing a home, giving birth to children and then feeding them – it is a lot of unsung heroic work – one that needs to be appreciated. It’s high time.

As the Data2X report mentions, it is encouraging to see that slowly but surely, measuring reliably and comprehensively the unpaid household and care work traditionally performed by women has risen in prominence as a major challenge for official statistics.

Last year, in an encouraging initiative, the government of Sindh stood poised to adopt a policy for home-based workers (HBWs), making it the first province in the country to implement such a policy. Nonetheless, the fact remains that the list of home-based workers generally does not include the work women do at home.

Data2X’s new report mentions that in 2017, India’s Ministry of Labour and Employment’s Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Act recognising women’s time spent in care work, went into effect. Such policies are needed in all developing countries.

The time has come that not just men, but also women, start recognising the immense contribution of women in the survival of a family and a society. Every woman works, even though she may not get paid for it. So let’s not dismiss their contribution, for they are the axis around which a society revolves.

Farahnaz is a writer and editor, and has worked as the Features Editor with The Express Tribune. Her focus is human-centric feature stories. She now writes as a freelancer, and works in the fields of communications and media training. She loves literature and traveling. She tweets as @FarahnazZahidi. Her work can be seen at chaaidaani.wordpress.com/